‘ICONog­ra­phy’

“I think the fact that we haven’t had a main­stream gay hip-hop artist is a tes­ta­ment still to the ho­mo­pho­bia of the in­dus­try,” he says, not­ing that there is a vi­brant un­der­ground scene of LGBT hip-hop in al­most ev­ery city in the coun­try.

“When you lis­ten to main­stream ra­dio there’s a cer­tain lim­ited num­ber of top­ics that a lot of rap­pers talk about. You know, get­ting high, hav­ing sex with women, and their money and their cars,” West says. “I think there’s this idea of re­ally chal­leng­ing the no­tion of a rap­per or a hip-hop artist. You know, a hip-hop artist can’t be highly in­tel­li­gent, can’t be very so­cially con­scious, can’t also be en­gaged in non­profit or cor­po­rate spa­ces to im­pact change.”